Mainframe news out there – October 2017

Once a month we like to pick articles from other blogs that we feel are interesting enough to talk about on the Planet Mainframe blog. Here are this week’s picks:

Linux is Linux but Even More on IBM LinuxONE

Very interesting article by Stephen D. Bartlett in a recent edition of the Clipper Group’s online publication: “Linux is Linux but Even More on IBM LinuxONE”. He gives as a very thorough look at IBM’s new LinuxONE Emperor II mainframe system – a Linux-only version of IBM’s new z14 hardware platform. LinuxONE Emperor II offers capabilities that no other platform can match— like being able to give good response times at up to 100% utilization, etc. It is the world’s premier Linux system for highly secured data serving and analytics, engineered from top to bottom for security, availability, performance, and scale.

Well, We Tested the Plan…

An interesting article by Stephen Guendert, PhD. in a recent edition of the Enterprise Executive online publication: “Well, We Tested the Plan; The Best Laid Plans…” He talks about how planning for IT disaster recovery: “While the term IT Resilience, or even Business Resilience is starting to gain more prominence in the BC/DR community, what is the forma definition? IBM defines it as the ability to rapidly adapt and respond to any internal or external disruption and continue business operations…”

Monitor the Cryptographic Protection of Your z/OS Network Traffic

An article by Chris Meyer, et. al in a recent edition of the IBM Systems Magazine online version, “Monitor the Cryptographic Protection of Your z/OS Network Traffic” caught my eye. The authors discuss new functionality in z/OS Communications Server V2.3 that does just that – measures the overall quality of the cryptographic protection for your z/OS network. Called z/OS Encryption Readiness Technology (zERT), it allows a z/OS network security administrator to determine which TCP and Enterprise Extender (EE) traffic patterns to and from their z/OS systems meet approved network encryption policies and which don’t.

Using Patterns…

Interesting article by S. Michael Benson in a recent edition of the Enterprise Executive online publication: “Using Patterns in Your Business.” He discusses a solution for the common problem of reinventing the wheel when porting an application from one platform/environment to another – Patterns. While admittedly not a silver bullet solution, it is A solution: “A pattern is a published general design to a recurring type of problem… pattern libraries may have some reusable code.”

In addition to the planning, development and management of the Planet Mainframe blog, Keith serves as Marketing Manager at DataKinetics, monitoring business trends, and providing messaging for corporate and partner products and solutions. Previously, Keith has held consulting, management, marketing and technical positions with various tech companies and government organizations.